• Fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in proposing, performing, reviewing and/or reporting research

• Fabrication/ Falsification of data
  • enhancing digital Images partially
  • excluding data from articles, presentations, grants
  • performing statistical analysis in a deliberately dishonest way
  • creating data that was never recorded or performed

• Plagiarism
  • copying text to use in a manuscript, article, thesis, grant or poster
  • republishing your own work (self-plagiarism)

William Summerlin (1974): Claimed to have developed a method to prevent immune rejection of transplanted skin grafts. He transplanted skin from black mice onto white mice. It was determined that he faked success by using a marker to color mouse skin.

Stephen Breuning (1980s): A psychologist who purported to show that stimulant drugs (e.g. Ritalin) were more effective for treatment of hyperactivity in mentally retarded individuals. This recommendation, which was incorporated into standards of care, was based on fraudulent data.

Andrew Wakefield (1998): Wakefield published evidence for a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism in The Lancet based on fraudulent data. He has since had his medical license stripped in the UK.

Surgisphere (2020) claimed to have hospital data which was used to support studies of the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19. Papers in The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine were retracted in June 2020 when the data was found to be implausible.

• Highlights from CDC insights report (June 21 2021)
  • pressure created by abundant marketing campaigns, unprecedented incentives, and vaccine requirements might alienate consumers who are unsure about getting vaccinated
  • while the ‘return to normal’ appears to be motivating some consumers to get vaccinated, it seems to be decreasing urgency for others
  • The origin story of the virus that causes COVID-19 is reducing confidence in COVID-19 vaccines for some
  • vaccine effectiveness is confusing (e.g. # of jabs, variants)
  • adverse effects
  • natural immunity vs vaccination for previously infected

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/downloads/SoVC-report-10-508.pdf

• Approximately 70% of research misconduct involves western blots

• Western blots detect the presence of a specific protein in a sample

• Bands are easy to cut out in graphic software and move around, rotate, and splice together